Scalar Field Modeling & Visualization on the Intel Delta'

We describe the parallelization of 3D scalar field modeling/visualization programs on a MIMD machine using message passing. The 3D scalar field is a 3D cuberille volume of scalar intensities such as parallel image slices of CT (Computed Tomography) or MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data. The cuberille volume is divided into small subcubes. Each subcube is approximaled by a trivariate cubic polynomial func­ tion. These polynomial functions are constructed to locally achieve Cl continuity on the shared faces of the cubes, and provide a compact interior representation (model) of the entire volume image data. The paral~ lclization is based on a "multi-host" partition scheme. Several possible partition methods are discussed, and our method is justified in terms of efficiency and low I/O overhead. Several strategies were implemented to eliminate or alleviate the problems usually associated with "host-slave" partition scheme. Our implementa­ tion shows efficient utilization of all nodes with good scalability.